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U.S. and Iran sign preliminary deal, pause fighting for 60 days

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Docusign diplomacy: A digital preliminary memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran has been signed, leading to an opening of the Strait of Hormuz and a 60-day pause in fighting while final details get hashed out.

On Friday, a more formal signing will take place, and negotiations will begin on the more challenging details of the agreement.

“We are prepared to release frozen funds and we are prepared to relieve sanctions, and we’ll do some small gestures of that in the beginning if they make some small gestures to us that show that they’re willing to meet their commitments as well,” a U.S. official told Reuters.

“In diplomatic terms, this agreement is an exit ramp from a costly and unpopular war, not a victory parade,” writes David Ignatius at The Washington Post. “The deal falls far short of President Donald Trump’s early talk of regime change and unconditional surrender.” Yes, yes. But it’s hard to know, from where we are right now, the degree to which this really will set back Iran and its attainment of a nuclear weapon.

We still don’t know what types of restrictions Iran will agree to with regard to its nuclear program, nor do we know what Israel will do with regard to Hezbollah and the fighting in southern Lebanon. We don’t know how U.S.-Israeli relations will be impacted in the long run. (Tensions between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been rather high during these last few weeks.) We don’t know whether Iran will, in fact, keep the Strait of Hormuz open, or whether we’ll see it mess around with the strait to gain leverage over the U.S. once again.

“Months of fighting revealed that multiple countries can impose costs,” wrote Foreign Policy‘s Will Todman, “but none can impose order.”

“The tactical and operational successes that the U.S. and Israeli militaries achieved masked a deeper strategic defeat, with neither securing the political objectives cited to justify the war in the first place,” argued Todman. “The Iranian regime survived and emerged more hard-line, and it discovered a new, powerful negotiating chip in closing the Strait of Hormuz.” But even bigger picture: “The war did not produce a clear victor or a more stable regional order. Instead, it accelerated fragmentation, deepened insecurity, and imposed costs on every key regional and global power involved, including Iran, the Arab Gulf states, Russia, and China. The war demonstrated that no state will be able to navigate the new era of global disorder unscathed.”

Scenes from New York: Appreciating my compatriots:

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